Each project that Pandora's Gallery undertakes, reflects our commitment to provide our clientele with the highest quality of materials and craftsmanship, to preserve and conserve your families heirlooms and beloved art. This particular image shows all the individual components that makes up a Pandora archival framed artwork. Mouse over the image to reveal each part.

Shadow Box Your Family Heirlooms & Precious Items

You've had them hidden in drawers and boxes for years and don't know what to do with them. The solution, have these unique items like small antiques, cards, or objects framed in a shadow box display.

The first thing is to gather up all those items that have something in common. It can be wedding items, grandparent collectibles, Knick Knacks from a favourite trip. There is no end to the awesome stuff that can be framed.

Now bring those items into Pandora's Gallery and speak to Suzanne, or Angela and they can start pulling ideas together.

The picture below illustrates one such design for a customer. After the first consultation, Angela composed this unique one-of-a-kind design, then selected appropriate frames that would go great with the elements, and placed the frame corners around the composition. Angela then took a picture and emailed it to the customer for approval. Once it was approved, Angela put it all together using museum quality techniques so that this will last for a lifetime.

If you have some interesting items that you would like composed together and framed in a shadow box, come in and speak with us.

Custom Shadow Box Designs can be created for so many things. Celebrate your sports achievements with a shadow box to include medals, photos, competition bibs and more. Preserve your Grandfather’s military medals, photos and letters in a beautiful design that tells the story of their service and bravery. Keep your life’s big adventures alive in a shadow box about your journey. What ever your life’s passion is we can bring it together in a one of kind custom framing design for you and your family to enjoy for generations. Angela and Suzanne will bring their experience, creativity and ingenuity to every design they create.

Sports Teams

University of Calgary Women’s Dinos Club needed to celebrate their year of hard work and success. We combined the photo, medals, ribbons and in-house designed sublimated plate in a multi-layered mat construction that created depth and interest to the overall design. This shadow box and many like it now fill the walls of their clubhouse and remind upcoming players of the legacy of the Dino’s Club Alumni that played before them. At Pandora’s we try to create something special for every customer.

Military Legacy

Honouring our military men and women is an important part of being a Canadian. At Pandora’s we take great pride and care in creating shadow box designs that are beautiful, classic and timeless. Here Angela worked with items from the personal files of the serviceman, including candid shots of a soldier’s camp life and pages from his personal notebook marking the significant events of the war. The intent was to create a design that reminds the viewer of that walk through memory lane when you open a keepsake box and look through the photos and pages scattered on a table top. This design is both personal and global at the same time, reflecting the daily life of the ordinary soldier.

Travel Adventures

A geologist climbed Mt. Kilimanjero with some close friends. Along the journey he picked up small rocks and brought them home. The certificate he earned for reaching the summit is framed by 2 mats and the in-house printed and mounted photos are floating above a background on which those small rocks are mounted in a trail to reflect the long arduous hike the friends traveled along together. The sunny colours of the mats compliment the colours and the rustic primitive design of the frame suits the African location of the trek. The client trusted Angela to come up with something wonderful to remember one of his great big adventures.

Family Vacations

In tribute to a Father and Son’s bucket list wish, these golf enthusiasts embarked on an adventure to golf the legendary courses of Scotland. With only a USB drive and a box of golf balls, Angela composed a design with photos and graphics created in-house. She designed markers to match the golf balls to the locations on the map of Scotland. The final design reflects their journey around Scotland and the special bond of Father and Son. This once in a lifetime trip is captured and preserved in a one of a kind shadow box.

This technique is exclusive to Pandora's Gallery, and adds so much more to your artwork. These lovely, original designs have been developed by our own talented in-house artist and co-owner, Suzanne Prevatt. Over the years she has mastered this process, fine tuning, researching and testing new techniques to add brilliance to each framed piece. The care and attention to detail that Suzanne gives these tiny works of art add more dimension and je ne sais quoi to your most prized possession. Visit Pandora's Gallery to discuss your next project and ask about custom, hand painted mats.

This mat has several attributes. First the base of the matte was painted using colours contained in the image. Next Suzanne scripted words and phrases giving it that old world charm. Lastly, to complete the look, the application of metallic rule tape was added to continue the theme and design of the art.

This mat has a hand painted wrapped bevel and French panel design that compliments the artwork and style. Masks were applied to contain the hand painting technique reflecting the artists dry brush flair in the ballerinas dress. Various colours contained inside the artwork were applied to the hand painting giving it depth and interest making one uniformed piece.

This mat had a simple application of texturing and paint to give it an illusion of sand and rock, like looking inside a carved space in King Tuts tomb. To separate the art from the mat, Suzanne used darker colours to add contrast.

This multi-dimensional mat has several different applications. First the mat was sponged with paint to give it a aged mottled affect. Then another mat was inset and stamped with different designs. These two mats were then adhered to a darker coloured mat to push the design outwards. It is important to understand the artwork lends an important role to what Suzanne is doing here. Using design elements and colours of the original art makes the entire piece gel and look unified.

Below are a collection of different handpainted mats that you can have on your next framed project.

Pandora's Gallery Custom Framing and Art is located in Calgary's northwest Crowfoot Crossing shopping centre. Since 1995, Pandora's framing designers have brought their talented expertise and framing experience to every consultation. Our friendly and helpful staff will guide you through the hundreds of frames and all the other details and decisions that go into the finished framing design. Pandora's uses the best quality conservation and archival framing materials in all our custom picture framing. All our framing is done in-house to provide you the very best quality and craftsmenship. Let us design a unique framing showcase for your art and collectibles to guarantee a lifetime of enjoyment.

We will create beautiful, sophisticated designs to enhance your art and collectibles for your home or office. From unique hand-painted mat embellishments to dazzling shadow boxes, our framing designers will custom make a truly beautiful setting for your treasures. Pandora's Gallery also features art prints, giclees, photo frames and art cards to enhance your home decor.

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Collecting cool memorabilia has become a great hang-up as framers develop new ways to combine and display everything from photos to clothing, wedding bouquets, medals and more.
Suzanne Prevatt, co-owner of...

About Us

Pandora’s Gallery Custom Framing and Art is located in Calgary’s northwest Crowfoot Crossing shopping centre. Pandora’s framing designers bring over 40 years of art and framing experience to every consultation.